Georgetown University Postpones Passover BDS Vote Following Outcry
In Washington, DC, on March 23, 2025, a group of Georgetown University students and community leaders protest. Photo: Andrew Thomas via Reuters Connect.
Georgetown University’s student government has rescheduled an anti-Israel boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) referendum that it initially scheduled to take place during the Passover holiday following outcry from Jewish students, who argued the original timing effectively disenfranchised them by depriving them of a chance to express opposition to the measure at the ballot box.
As previously reported, the Georgetown University Student Association’s (GUSA) senators voted via secret ballot for a resolution to hold the referendum — which will ask students to decide whether they “support … divesting from companies arming Israel and ending university partnerships with Israeli institutions” — on April 14-16. The move outraged Jewish students, as well as GUSA senators who deplored the body’s passing the measure by allegedly illicit means.
“This referendum, cloaked in the language of human rights, represents not only a troubling overstep into Georgetown’s academic and fiduciary independence but also a campaign rooted in the discriminatory logic of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement,” said a letter the university’s chapter of Students Supporting Israel (SSI) sent to university president Robert Groves. “The passage of this measure would not occur in isolation. It would embolden future efforts to marginalize Jewish and Israeli students, deepen campus polarization, and risk fueling the disturbing rise in antisemitism seen at other institutions. Universities that have permitted such one-sided campaigns are now facing not only fractured communities and repetitional harm but growing federal scrutiny — including potential impacts to public funding.”
GUSA said on Monday that it moved the referendum date, issuing a statement which acknowledged concerns raised by SSI, as well as Chabad Georgetown, Georgetown Israel Alliance, and the Jewish Student Association.
“We made this decision after hearing concerns about the placement of the election during a religious holiday,” the governing body said in a statement posted on Instagram. “Although the election has been rescheduled, formal campaigners may continue to campaign for the referendum until the end of the campaigning period. Individuals may continue to register as formal campaigners until the end of the campaigning period.”
The referendum must still be contested for other reasons, SSI told The Algemeiner on Tuesday.
“We commend the decision to move the vote past Passover but are still intent on combating the procedural irregularities surrounding the referendum,” the group said, referring to the fact that the resolution only passed because GUSA senators, the campus newspaper reported, “voted to break rules” which require referenda to be evaluated by the Policy and Advocacy Committee (PAC), a period of deliberation which establishes their merit, or lack thereof, for consideration by the senate.
Georgetown is one of 60 colleges and universities being investigated by the federal government due to being deemed by the Trump administration as soft on antisemitism and excessively “woke.” Such inquiries have led to the scorching of several billion dollars’ worth of federal contracts and grants awarded to America’s most prestigious institutions of higher education.
On Monday, the administration impounded more than $2 billion in federal funding previously awarded to Harvard University over the institution’s refusal to agree to a wishlist of reforms that Republican lawmakers have long argued will make higher education more meritocratic and less welcoming to anti-Zionists and far-left extremists.
In March, it canceled $400 million in federal contracts and grants for Columbia University, a measure that secured the school’s acceding to a slew of demands the administration put forth as preconditions for restoring the money. Princeton University saw $210 million of its federal grants and funding suspended too, prompting its president, Christopher Eisgruber to say the institution is “committed to fighting antisemitism and all forms of discrimination.” Brown University’s federal funding is also reportedly at risk due to its alleged failing to mount a satisfactory response to the campus antisemitism crisis, as well as its alignment with the DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] movement.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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